Region confronts rise in heroin use

Officials from Portage and Wood counties will host a public forum on heroin use at 7 p.m. Thursday in the auditorium at Ben Franklin Junior High School in Stevens Point.(Photo: File/Getty Images/iStockphoto)

STEVENS POINT — A sign near the entrance to the Salvation Army shelter in Stevens Point shows a syringe and bottle of pills crossed out by a slash and circled in red.

It's a warning to anyone entering the homeless shelter that drugs are not allowed.

Still, Dana Kaminski, the facility's director of housing and case management, said it is becoming increasingly common for people to show up at the shelter while struggling with addictions to prescription pills or heroin.

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Dana Kaminski, director of housing and case management at the Salvation Army shelter in Stevens Point.(Photo: Stevens Point Journal)

The shelter randomly drug tests residents — many of whom are dealing with criminal charges on top of an addiction — to try to make sure no one is using drugs while staying there, Kaminski said.

"They're asked to leave if they're found using," she said.

The strict rules involving drugs at the shelter don't always hide the impact addictions can have on the lives of the people staying there, Kaminski said.

After a year spent studying the rising use of heroin in the region, officials from Portage and Wood counties will host a public forum at 7 p.m. Thursday in the auditorium at Ben Franklin Junior High School in Stevens Point. It will include a discussion about what was learned, as well as a guest speaker and a panel to answer questions from the audience.

Stevens Point Police Chief Kevin Ruder.(Photo: Contributed)

Stevens Point Police Chief Kevin Ruder said officials in Portage County began to notice the resurgence of heroin use when police and paramedics suddenly began responding to more heroin overdoses in recent years.

"We were reviving people from heroin overdoses at an alarming rate," he said. "Sometimes it would be multiple times for the same person."

Ruder said he was disturbed by the deadly nature — there have been several heroin overdose deaths in the county in the last few years — and addictiveness of the drug.

"People come to the brink of death and have to be revived with another medication from a comatose state, yet they continue their use of this dangerous drug," he said.

Officials in Portage and Wood counties, including Ruder, decided that if they hoped to quell the rise in heroin use, they first needed to learn more about it.

Soon, Ruder said, a pattern emerged that showed people become addicted to heroin as a substitute for a separate addiction to prescription medications.

"Heroin has the same effects on the body as pain medication does," he said.

Ruder said he and other officials quickly learned the problem would not be solved with arrests. Instead, the focus will be on awareness and education.

"That's what ultimately led us to the public forum," he said. "Education is going to be the key in trying to resolve this issue."

Chris Mueller can be reached at 715-345-2251. Follow him on Twitter as @AtChrisMueller.

If you go

What: A public forum hosted by officials from Portage and Wood counties on the rising use of heroin in the region

When: 7 p.m. Thursday

Where: Ben Franklin Junior High School, 2000 Polk St. in Stevens Point